Otto Rahn: Himmler’s Grail Explorer

It is well known that the Third Reich had a fascination with the treasures of the Cathari and the Armna Christi – the objects that caused the sorrows and sufferings of the Christ. Here, we explore the work of Otto Rahn, a fellow engaged by Heinrich Himmler to research the Treasures of Solomon and the Grail.

Himmler engages Rahn

Himmler sent a telegram to a fellow in France in 1929 – one Otto Rahn, who had written a book called Cross and Grail. Himmler was interested in bending history and rewriting narrative to give a workable myth to the new aryan order of Teutonic Knights. He even had a castle for training of knights with a round table which was to have 13 seats. It was to have its own rites – SS Teutonic christening, SS Teutonic marriage, death rites, like this. Himmler was Ignatius (the soldier turned priest and leader of a new order) to the Black Pope of the Third Reich, Hitler (this is what Hitler called Himmler). I am told by an expatriate German priest that Hitler was very, very interested in the occult and frequently referred to divine providence in his public discourses. Hitler thought he could obtain the spear of Longinus (German: Heilige Lanze) – the spear that pierced the side of Christ – which was reputed to have magical powers. Hitler also authorised expeditions to Tibet and formed an enclave of Tibetan monks of the Bönpo religion to serve him with access to occult realms and dimensions – but more of this later.

Otto Rahn was a poet and a writer who used a somewhat rudimenatary historical method which was frequently criticised by academics. He lived from 1904 to 1939, when he was said to have taken the honourable solution to his expulsion from the SS (for bringing impurity to the SS with his homosexual activity) with the “white starvation” – suicide in the snow. There is much speculation about the timing of death and there was a claim that Rahn actually travelled to Scotland in late 1945. As myth maker for the Third Reich, he was given much of a free hand and allowed to travel and explore the ancient legends. He was to write “Lucifer’s Hofgesind”, a narrative that somewhat bypassed Christianity and gave a new order of light to the light beings who were the pure ancestors of Indo European ancestors of the Aryan race. The great light being, of course, was the much maligned Lucifer.

Otto Rahn believed that Montsegur was the place where Lucifer fell to Earth. He frequently posed the question to himself, “Must a Hessian travel to Montségur to discover that it was his Muntsalvesche? This is because Rahn believed that the Treasures of Solomon were buried in a cave nearby – and he had spent time exploring caves, taking photographs and was roughed up for making chalk marks on existing carvings so he could photograph them better. There are photographs of huge pentacles in the caves, etc,. How did the treasures of Solomon get to a cave in France? We look to the Fall of Rome in 410AD.

Titus Flāvius Caesar

The son of Vespasian Caesar, Titus, was tasked with ending the Jewish rebellion in AD 70, as his father went to Rome in the year of the four Emperors, and became Caesar. In AD70, Titus besieged and captured Jerusalem and destroyed the city and the Second Temple. For this achievement Titus was awarded a triumph. The Arch of Titus commemorates this victory to this day. (The Arch is actually still present in Rome and clearly visible.)

The reason for reference to Titus is that clearly visible on the Arch of Titus is the Ark of the Covenant. When Titus ransacked and destroyed the Second Temple in Jerusalem, he brought the Ark of the Covenant with his war booty to Rome. It is through that there were many other treasures, sometimes called the Treasures of Solomon. These included the Tablets of Moses, the Grail Cup, the Ark of the Covenant, the Sword of David, the Harp of David and the Golden Urn of Manna. These were thought to have been brought to Montségur by Alaric after the Fall of Rome in 410 AD. Rahn was to call this the “treasures of the Catharii”. These were thought to reside at Montségur until 1244, when they were removed and placed in a cave at Sabarthés, sealed with a great stone rolled over the entrance and guarded by vipers.

Rahn explored caves and began to write an esoteric narrative centred the Knights of Berne and the Kingdom of Laurin, and claimed he had a dietrich, (a skeleton key ) to access all of this on another realm, another dimensional place. Himmler and Hitler somewhat bought this and obtained Tibetan monks from the Bönpo Religion who could access dimensional doorways and obtain objects from other dimensions. From time to time, Rahn was to search for physical objects and made visits to Rennes le Chateau, where he thought that the treasures of Father Berenger Sauniere were in fact the Treasures of Solomon. He was to spend two weeks at Rennes-le-Chateau attempting to obtain the secrets of this treasure from Sauniere’s housekeeper (as Sauniere himself had passed some 14 years earlier).

Due Rahn’s explorations of grail geometry, he was to travel further afield to Sweden, to Edinburgh to the Roslyn Chapel (which he called Arthur’s Bosom) and spent some time exploring the background of the Teutonic Knights who were destroyed by one Konrad of Marburg – a German bishop who did much to suppress the Order of Teutonic Knights (which Rahn thought of as “German Kathars”) with methods very similar to those used to suppress the Order of Knights Templar. Rahn at one time spoke of “What I found in a cave in the Pyrenees” – only to never repeat this again. This has caused much speculation as Rahn trod on snakes in the dark in his cave explorations. He had visited the caves in Fontanet and explored the caves of Lombrives. There were those who thought that Rahn had made “mental discoveries” and was on speaking terms with Elementals, Imps and other beings in the caves.

During the war, the soldiers used Jewish prisoners to dig and excavate around Oradur-sur-Glane, a place where the soldiers undertook a complete massacre of all the villagers. They herded them into a church and placed a bomb behind the altar and detonated it. There were also searches and excavations around Rennes le Chateau, as the soldiers were looking for the cave of Sabarthés and its contents. A key issue here is Anschau – materials which were not accessible on the 3rd dimension, but accessible on higher dimensional realms, such as the astral or the lower 4th dimension.

By 1938, Germany was swept up in the occult, and Rahn’s masters – Himmler and Hitler, were patient with his eccentric explorations. Hitler had his astrologers, Rudolph Hess believed the Grail was nearby, and parapsychology, graphology, prediction and Nostradamus were all the rage. During the war, MI6 had a little-known esoteric – witchcraft research centre near Bletchley headed up by a Colonel Maltby, and used this to create an elaborate ruse forging documents of Nostradamus which were being referred to by the Third Reich. This was thought to have lured Hess to Scotland. With the fall of Berlin in 1945, the Russians discovered a cache of 1000 dead Tibetans and a circle of Bönpo monks – deceased – who were engaged in a ritual act.

It is thought that Otto Rahn had an esoteric key which he grafted from the tales of the Argonauts, and the search for the Golden Fleece. Rahn found elements in the tales of the Argonauts which he was to employ in his stories of the mystic Knights of Berne and the entrance to the Kingdom of Laurin, wherein the treasures might be obtained. There was some recognition that Rahn had found an esoteric key and he was being carefully watched. Would he access the inner realms and return with the physical forms of the inner glory?

War was looming, Rahn had been ordered to Dachau for military training as penance for his sins (drunkenness) as was there on Kristallnacht, a nation-wide pogrom in 1938. His masters became tired of him, and he promised further writings, never to come forth with the works as he was frequently living a hand to mouth existence. He was discovered flagrante, twice, in Berlin in late 1938 and was quietly advised to take the “white starvation”. He was formally separated from the SS in March 1939 (backdated to February) and is alleged to have suicided on or around 12-13 March. In June of 1939, a formal notice was placed in the papers announcing the passing of SS-Obersturmführer Otto Rahn. Having taken the “white starvation”, his sins were forgiven and he was formally readmitted to the SS.

Otto Rahn’s letter of resignation from the SS

Some speculate that Rahn actually faked his suicide and lived on, and was transported to Arthur’s Bosom (the Roslyn Chapel) nearby Edinburgh in 1945. Speculation aside, he had succeeded somewhat in his task of creating a myth the SS could use to recreate an ancient order of Teutonic Knights at Wewelsburg, the Nazi Grail Castle.

Vedic Astrology

A birth time is not given for Otto Rahn. We have 18 February 1904, and as per custom place the time at 12:00:00 for unknown births. One thing is clear, Rahn was born with Kaal Sarp Yoga, all the planets located between the two lunar nodes, Rahu and Ketu. This indicates there will be a constant suffering in this life and Rahn was an active homosexual. He was caught inflagrante by the SS several times and sent to a prison camp to cure him of his tendencies. Officially, he was sent for drunkenness. The axis of the kaal sarp yoga is Rahu in 5th House, Ketu in 11 house. This is called padma kaal sarp yoga and indicates a psychosocial inconsistency: one gives advice to others that one does not follow nor practice.

If we look to the 8th house (explorations of the occult) in the birth chart, this is empty, aspected by Rahu. One of the interesting things is that in D9 (Navamsha chart) Mercury is present in the 8th house – Aries, Ashwini nakshatra – indicating gathering of information and intelligence. Ashwini nakshatra is fully rajasic, indicating that frequent bursts of energy devoted to area of interest will dominate this life. In D10 (Success) Saturn is in Ashwini in the 7th house – debilitated – indicating that there will be a lack of discipline in his relations with the world, and in his business. It seems that time and energy may be wasted if there were not others setting deadlines and schedules for Rahn to follow. In fact, the Third Reich got very impatient with Rahn (Himmler in particular) and set deadlines for him and eventually discarded him.

Rahn never had very much money and frequently lived a hand to mouth existence. He would submit ideas for projects to Himmler who would discuss them with Hitler and his advisors and receive an advance to explore and bring back some results on the issue promoted. In the D10 chart, Moon is debilitated in the second house (Scorpio) conjunct Mars, who is Lord of that sign, and supplies energies to explore the occult mysteries offered by Scorpio, traditionally. Rahn was anything but traditional, nor did he have a strong internal discipline. However, on Kristallnacht, he was at Dachau internment camp and gave good account of his time there (principally because others were enforcing discipline upon him).

In a lot of respects, Otto Rahn was burdened with afflictions (his birth moon was malefic and conjunct the Sun), had to hide his sexuality, and although a gifted explorer and writer of the occult, (Rahu is in the 9th house in D10 chart indicating strong and enduring success of his works) he was unreliable and had shifting boundaries vis-a-vis his responsibilities. Where Rahu has unrestricted access to information, Rahu would also cheat, forge, mislead and misrepresent. Rahn was given a solid thrashing by a farmer for marking over with chalks the inscriptions and indentations he found in a cave. He also added a few sigils of his own, the farmer later discovered.

The D10 chart also has Jupiter, Mercury and Ketu in the third house, the house of publications (Rahn was a published poet and gifted orator) aspected by Rahu, indicating that Rahn was to explore not only the physical realms but also the non-physical.